By Andrea V. Brambila 

They’ve painted Onesies emblazoned with “Healthcare for All Kids”. They’ve sent apples and e-mailed letters to legislators. They’ve taken pictures of smiling toddlers, signed petitions and told their own healthcare stories. The national activist group MomsRising is making it easy for the Bay Area’s busy moms to take political action on an issue that is especially close to their hearts: children’s health.

By offering short, convenient and often creative opportunities for action that moms can fit into their congested schedules, MomsRising aims to show that being a mom does not have to mean political isolation.

Assemblymember Loni Hancock and Joan Blades, founder of MomsRising  

“Mothers are often isolated and want to get in touch with other like-minded people,” said Donna Norton, co-director of MomsRising’s California Campaign.

Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org, started MomsRising on Mother’s Day 2006. The group is based on a website, MomsRising.org and is feedback-driven. It has no central office, although many of its core members, including Blades, live in the Bay Area. The group boasts over 120,000 members nationwide. In California they have 25,000 alone.

“Write us and tell us that you want to work on it,” Blades told members at a recent Berkeley forum on children’s healthcare.

Early on, organizers conducted a survey asking members what issues they cared about most. Healthcare emerged as a core issue. Others were paid family leave, realistic and fair wages for mothers, and quality, affordable childcare.

At a Berkeley forum earlier this month, about 50 Bay Area members met in person for the first time to talk to each other and to urge local legislators to extend affordable healthcare coverage to all children in California. Both Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) and Assemblymember Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) attended.

Lack of coverage means many families live in a state of uncertainty regarding any health problem, they said, and coverage means children will get more preventive care and will spend less time being sick and missing school.

The California Legislature’s Assembly Health Committee passed a healthcare bill, AB 1X, Nov. 14 and will send it for a floor vote on Nov. 26. The bill would cover all children and their parents earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty line. The poverty line is $20,650 for a family of four. Despite two months of negotiations in a special session, Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger still disagree on how to finance the bill.

MomsRising does not favor any bill in particular. But with healthcare bills stalled at both the national and state level, they want legislators to at least cover children.

An estimated 7.3 percent of California children remain uninsured. Although the Bay Area has a lower percentage of uninsured children at 3.4 percent, affordability is a major issue for many of the region’s mothers.

“Currently, state assistance kicks in based on poverty level. And for people that live in the Bay Area, poverty level isn’t really relevant because costs are so high,” said Ashley Boyd, co-director of MomsRising’s California Campaign.

The poverty level is set nationally and does not vary according to geography or a particular region’s cost of living.

DeSaulnier, himself a single father of two, also emphasized that any bill the Legislature passes shouldn’t be more expensive for those it’s trying to help by requiring higher deductibles, for example, or not including full benefits.

“The danger is we can declare victory, but it’s not a real victory,” DeSaulnier said.

Only 56 percent of California’s employees were covered through their employers in 2006. And employers who offer coverage are reducing benefits to spouses and children.

Berkeley MomsRising member Linh Spencer with daughters Nai Li, 7, and Minh Kai, 4 

Even MomsRising members with health care said they want other children to have what their children have.

“My children get very good healthcare,” said Linh Spencer, Berkeley mother of two. “And I’d like to think that everybody’s children could get as good healthcare.”

Hancock advised members to meet with their representatives, even in small groups of five. There’s nothing like a determined group of mothers to strike “terror” in the heart of a legislator, she said.

“Now we know what we need to do and what we need to say,” said Krista Keim, mother of two.

Norton stressed that the grassroots aspect of the group is important because not only do members illustrate the impact of legislation through personal stories, but they also feel empowered. She told the story of a woman in MomsRising who had gone to a legislator’s office and told him about living without health insurance.

“She really felt like she had made a difference,” Norton said.

Over 50 people met in downtown Berkeley Nov. 3 to Step It Up, joining hundreds across the Bay Area for the National Day of Climate Action. View audio-slideshow.

This story first published on North Gate News Online.

Chang-Qin Wu didn’t miss his second court date. He’d traveled all the way from Shanghai to guarantee it. By 9:30 a.m. Oct. 19, he was seated in the Berkeley Courthouse opposite his accuser and former landlady to find out whether the trans-Pacific flight would be worth it. He hastily tugged his blazer over his shoulders and sat up straight as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Marshall Whitley entered the small claims court.

Across the aisle, 78-year-old Esther Yang of El Sobrante shuffled to her seat, propped her feet on her metal walker’s support bars and with a trembling thumb sifted through the photographs and faded receipts she’d brought along as proof of her claim. Wu, she said, had never paid her the $1,000 rent for November 2006 and left apartment No. 3 in her building at 1117 Brighton Street in Albany filled with trash and an overflowing sink. It cost her $6,325 to clean it up.

Yang was expecting to collect at least $5,200 of that because a different judge had awarded it to her on July 6 after Wu didn’t show up to defend himself at the first small claims trial. Wu left the United States five months before, 10 days after Yang filed her suit and seven days after he sent her a new check to cover the disputed rent. He said he mailed it to the San Diego address listed on his rental agreement, same as he always had, and thought that would be the end of it.

“I thought the condition was almost the same as when we got there,” Wu said, recalling his last moments in the apartment before returning to Shanghai, where he teaches physics at Fudan University.

The return ticket turned out to be worth the money for Wu. This time he won. Wu, Whitley ruled, owed Yang no more than the $1,000 security deposit he’d given her in February 2006, when he and his wife, Yue-Ping Zheng, agreed to rent the apartment while Wu conducted physics research at the University of California Berkeley as a visiting scholar.

Beyond that, Yang’s investment in a fresh coat of paint, patched holes, water damage repair, new window shades and detailed scrubbing weren’t his responsibility.

The ruling came as a relief to Wu, who was alarmed to receive an email from UC Berkeley student Jie Wu on July 7, telling him that they both were ordered to pay Yang. Wu then asked the court to reconsider its decision. In a written statement filed Aug. 31, Wu said he had paid Yang her rent, and because the apartment was very old and in need of repair, he shouldn’t be held responsible for what was essentially maintenance.

Jie was a former student at Fudan who had helped Wu get the apartment in 2006, but otherwise had nothing to do with the dispute. He never lived on Brighton Street, and Wu was baffled as to why Jie was listed on Yang’s original claim. According to Yang, Jie was a co-signer on Wu’s lease.

Yang, who has owned property since 1977 from Berkeley to Hayward to Alameda, doesn’t hesitate to turn to the courts to protect her rights as a landlady. But the Brighton Street complex, which she bought in 1982, has been a particular source of trouble. Since 2003, she’s filed six cases against her tenants there, citing repeated unpaid rent, overflowing trash and property damage.

The Wus, Yang said, left the apartment in such disarray that she couldn’t show the place for an entire month.

“They only lived there one year,” she said. “I don’t know how they got it so dirty.”

Yang said Whitley unfairly favored Wu, whose appeal of the July 6 court ruling was filed after the 30-day deadline. Small claims court rules prevent her as plaintiff from appealing the ruling.

This was disappointing for Yang, who said she is often frustrated by her experience in court. Early in her case against Wu, she submitted a hand-written letter requesting that Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Taber be removed after telling Yang in April “that she could not understand my Chinese accent.”

“I am old, and I cannot always explain myself,” said Yang, who continues to represent herself in court.

“A lawyer would charge me $100, $200, $300 an hour,” she added. “I’d rather do it myself.”

This article was first published by North Gate News Online.

By Andrea V. Brambila 

Creative and technically minded independent workers in the East Bay used to have three workplace options: cafes, home offices or rented space. Now Berkeley has a fourth, the co-working site.

Berkeley Coworking, the first of its kind in the city, opened over the summer in South Berkeley near the Ashby BART Station.

Mark MacVicar and co-founder Jonathan Zamick.  Zamick’s dog, Eos, lounges in the middle.  

Proponents say co-working is cheaper than renting, encourages workers to share ideas and equipment and to interact socially, and comes without the guilt of being “cafe nomads” who take up tables for hours on one cup of coffee.

The arrangement also has distinct advantages over working at home, says Berkeley Coworking’s co-founder Christopher Allen.

At home, “work life and personal life become more and more entwined, and you start leaving home to relax, which defeats the whole purpose (of being home),” Allen said.

Allen and co-founder Jonathan Zamick designed Berkeley Coworking in a 1,100-square-foot, two-story space with both utility and conviviality in mind. The site’s entire facade is made of glass, inviting in daylight.

At the entryway is a comfy couch with a coffee table that pulls out into a desk.

Communal appliances hum in the nearby kitchenette. The second floor is a loft, where co-workers easily (and frequently) call out questions or suggestions to each other.

Co-workers drop in, pick out a desk or a table, pull out their laptops and get to work. The Internet access is free. For those who want a key and a spot to call their own, desks are available for $400 a month, plus an initial $300 fee.

Although the first floor can be rented for events on evenings and weekends, the “anchors,” as the desk tenants are called, cover the majority of the lease, which is held by Zamick.

Sean O’Steen, web developer  

So far, the site is operating at a loss. Only five of the eight desks available for rent have been taken. Allen doesn’t seem worried. The high-tech entrepreneur is counting on word-of-mouth to attract the last three tenants.

In the meantime, $100-a-month fees charged to regulars — those who come in frequently and leave some belongings at the site but do not rent a desk —

are helping to cover the lease. Events and voluntary tips from drop-ins supplement the income.

Before coming to Berkeley Coworking, anchor and Web developer Sean O’Steen tried both working at home and renting an office. With two kids, one was too noisy and the other too lonely.

“I was going stir-crazy,” he said. “Here, there’s a group of people I can bounce ideas off of when we’re not all busy.”

Besides, O’Steen added, renting an office is expensive: “Before coming here, I was looking at an office in the East Bay, and it cost $600 a month for a phone, Internet and a mailbox.”

Until now, only San Francisco had co-working space. The phenomenon started there in 2005 with Spiral Muse in the Mission District, which closed after eight months, though the co-working idea itself continues to flourish. Allen and Zamick got their inspiration for Berkeley Coworking from another San Francisco site: Citizen Space, which opened last November near the Embarcadero.

According to Allen, the founders of Citizen Space have made their ideas about what makes co-working succeed available to others on a Web site, which they say has led to the development of 30 to 40 sites worldwide.

Self-employed co-worker Deborah Dietz usually frequents Citizen Space, but she came to the Berkeley site for the first time recently to work on a project with Allen. For her, collaboration is what makes co-working so appealing.

“Everybody who comes here has a passion, and it brings separate people together,” Dietz said. “Truly, you ride their buzz. It’s very cool.”

Also published in the Berkeley Voice. 

By Andrea V. Brambila

Walk into the office of the head data-cruncher at Berkeley Unified School District and you’ll find two accessories that might seem out of place: a wood-framed hourglass on a glossy new desk and a glittering tiara crowning the occupant.

“I call myself the Data Queen,” said Phyllis Jane “P.J.” Hallam, the district’s new director of assessment, evaluation and research. The hourglass is a gift from a friend who noted Hallam’s love of measuring.

A graduate of UC Berkeley’s Literacy Assessment doctorate program, Hallam, 53, was hired over the summer to start the new three-person department dedicated to using objective and accurate data to improve student achievement and evaluate programs.

The new department, funded as part of a $19 million school parcel tax known as Measure A, reflects a new call for data-driven decision making in California schools.

“Most decisions are made based on emotions,” said Mark Coplan, the district’s public information officer. “There’s no data to substantiate that programs are valuable.”

For example, some have criticized the district for not doing enough to close the achievement gap between white, African American and Latino students. The new department hopes to take a quantitative view of that problem and use data in new ways to solve it.

So far this year, Hallam has worked on helping teachers and principals use Datawise MEASURES, a student information data-analysis system. Although the district first bought the system two years ago, only a few hired consultants and technically inclined teachers have used it.

But in the short time the department has existed, Datawise has been used considerably.

To give elementary school teachers an idea of students’ aptitude at the beginning of the year, the department produced reports detailing writing, math and reading test scores from last year to help teachers plan their instruction. Middle school teachers asked for a more historical view of their students’ abilities, and they received reports of students’ scores for the past three years.

Hallam’s hire also illustrates Berkeley Unified’s multiple-factor approach to measuring student achievement and holding people accountable for their progress, or lack thereof.

Whereas state and federal measures are largely based on standardized test scores, district math and writing exams are teacher-scored and open-ended questions are asked.

Hallam favors teacher-based assessments of a wide range of student work at different points of the school year, rather than annual standardized multiple-choice tests. She became interested in the approach as a humanities teacher at Riverview Middle School in Bay Point when she realized the standardized tests were not taking into account her students’ interests or cultural backgrounds.

That meant some of her students did not understand the questions and were left behind, she said. She pointed to a question that mentioned pirate’s “booty,” which can mean loot to some people, or rear end to others.

“The problem with the multiple-choice standardized tests now is that there’s an over-emphasis on them,” Hallam said. “They’re OK for ballpark estimates, but they’re being misused by policymakers for graduation decisions, retention decisions, rewarding and punishing schools.”

Hallam pointed to the No Child Left Behind Act as an example. The federal act requires schools to meet certain state-set accountability benchmarks based on standardized test scores. Her department spends too much time, she said, getting the required standardized tests ready, keeping them secure and gathering student information to meet the federal law’s requirement that 95 percent of certain student groups — such as disabled or African American students — take the tests.

She finds it annoying that a school’s Adequate Yearly Progress, the federal standard used to show how much a school has improved, is based on just two years of data instead of multiple years or the results of other, teacher-based assessments.

For elementary and middle schools, whether or not a school makes AYP is based on scores for the California Standards Tests, which are part of the STAR tests. At the high school level, it is based on scores for the California High School Exit Exam.

“It’s not a valid use of data,” said Hallam, because test scores don’t measure whether a student has a headache or is in a bad mood that day.

Although she hopes Berkeley Unified’s accountability measures will be a model for the nation, she is skeptical that politicians will be open to less clear-cut types of student assessment.

“Standardized tests appeal to politicians as a quick and easy solution,” she said, “but learning is complex.”

Also published in the Berkeley Voice.